


By Chance

by Femme (femmequixotic)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, Pushing Daisies
Genre: Gen, post-DH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-03
Updated: 2008-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmequixotic/pseuds/Femme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes second chances do occur...by chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Chance

**Author's Note:**

> HP/Pushing Daisies crossover; written for the 2007 snape_after_dh fest

At the precise age of nineteen years, sixteen weeks, five days, nine hours, and eighteen minutes, young Ned walked into the village of Hogsmeade in Scotland. In the years to come, he was never quite certain how (or for that matter entirely why) he stumbled across the strange little town and its even stranger inhabitants as neither were listed on the map of the Scottish Highlands that was tucked into his knapsack nor in any of the guidebooks he had discreetly borrowed from the library of the Longburrow School for Boys with no intention of returning.

He had come to Scotland in search of pies. Since his mother's death when he was nine years, twenty-seven weeks, six days, nine hours and eight minutes, Ned had become obsessed with her favourite dessert. He had already mastered the sweet variations with their lattice-tops and their steaming slits and their thick, peaked meringues--the rhubarb and the peach and the apple and the strawberry and the lemon and the coconut-banana with sprinklings of pecans and perhaps, on an especially creative day, shavings of the darkest chocolate Switzerland could produce.

One might suggest that such a preoccupation could indicate that perhaps there were maternal issues that might require therapeutic address. Ned would merely counter such protest with a slightly bemused quirk to his eyebrows and offer another slice of cherry pie--his own rendition of his mother's simple recipe, of course. One sweetly succulent bite would be enough to prove that, whatever odd twists of personality the reserved young man might have, the fact remained that he was, without doubt and despite his meager years, a master of his craft.

However, it was the famous Scottish savoury pies that interested him now; the lamb and the steak and the offal and the potatoes and the onions sealed with thick gravy between two flaky crusts. His attempts to reproduce these gastronomic delights had failed quite miserably thus far. Recipe after failed recipe, he had yet to determine the precise measurements of spices and meat and starches that would provide that perfect, exquisite explosion of taste destined to remain seared upon the eater's memory.

Standing in his kitchen, covered from head to toe in flour and sheep intestine, Ned realized there was, of course, only one choice to be made. Perfection demanded it.

The piemaker packed jeans and t-shirts in the faded knapsack he had carried for nearly ten years at school, made arrangements for a neighbor to look after his dog Digby for a few weeks, purchased an economy ticket to Edinburgh from an airline not known for its high safety rating, and flew to the land of haggis and kilts. He hired a Vauxhall Belmont and ate his way through Edinburgh and Perthshire and Kirkwall and Blackwaterfoot and Killmarnock, learning by taste the secrets of the great Scottish piemakers such as Wallace and Brownings and Galbraith.

It was an accident that brought him to Hogsmeade--one that involved a great quantity of sheep, a rainy afternoon, a slick curve in the road and and what would prove to be the disheartening loss of young Ned's deposit on the hired car.

And so the piemaker discovered himself walking for the nearest village in the hopes of procuring a phone to use to inform the car hire agency that the smoldering remains of the Belmont could be found at the bottom of a ravine on top of a sheep or two.

He found a pub on the outskirts of High Street, a gloomy ramshackle place of business with a cockeyed sign hanging from one hinge over the door that proclaimed the place The Hog's Head. The dark interior was just as grim, with the additional charming reek of goat and unwashed skin that caused the piemaker to press his jacketed arm against his nose in an almost impossible attempt not to gag.

A man rose out of the gloomy shadows behind the bar, a tall thin fellow in what looked like a grimy purple friar's robe. Sharp blue eyes glinted at Ned. "We're closed," the man said shortly and the suddenly nervous piemaker shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked forward on the balls of his feet. There was something about the man that disquieted Ned, something about him that seemed oddly familiar, almost as if some part of himself deep within was calling out.

"I need to use your phone," the piemaker said and he shifted from one foot to another as the strange man with the dirty beard and too-bright eyes studied him. "I've had a little accident just down the road with my rental car--"

"Haven't any." The man smeared a rag filthier than his own robe, if that indeed was possible, across the sticky bar.

Ned blinked. "I see." He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. "None at all?"

"No." The man tossed the rag aside and reached for a bottle marked Ogden's Finest Firewhisky. The piemaker swallowed. The whisky steamed as it splashed into a dirty glass; the man pushed it at him. "You look cold."

It was then that Ned realized that he was, in fact, quite chilled. His clothes were soaked through with rain, his hair plastered to his head. He took the whisky cautiously, sniffing it. A puff of steam burst in his face.

"Best just to knock it back." The man crossed his arms over his chest. "Won't burn as much."

A boy burst from a portrait hanging on the wall, his foot catching on the frame as he pitched forward into the room and shouted _Aberforth_. Ned's fingers tightened on the glass in his hand and he glanced back between the sandy-haired boy and the man standing behind the bar, his face disturbingly blank.

"Not now, Longbottom," Aberforth--for that was his name--snapped, but the boy only spared the piemaker a cursory glance.

"The castle--"

Aberforth raised a hand. The boy fell silent, mouth tight. "Drink," Aberforth said, and Ned, without meaning to, without even thinking of the dubious consequences of imbibing what appeared to be liquid fire, lifted the glass to his mouth and drained it.

Only when the darkness began to wrap around him, pulling his heavy body to the floor did he think _maybe this is a little weird._

By that time, however, it was far too late for Ned the piemaker.

He fell.

***

Ned was ten hours, twenty minutes and five seconds older when he woke and found himself locked in a small room with the most hideous pink cabbage rose paper one could imagine peeling from the wall in strips. Deep scratches marred the dusty wood floor on which he'd been ungraciously tossed, and a dead mayfly lay only inches away from his nose. Ned breathed out slowly and with great care not to touch the mayfly, pushed himself up--then sneezed.

The insect shivered and Ned, for the briefest moment, froze. The mayfly stayed still; Ned sighed in relief.

You see, young Ned the piemaker had a great gift. Or a horrific curse, depending upon the way one looked upon the matter. For Ned was a rare individual, one who had been given by no one in particular the curious ability to wake the dead.

Such tremendous power, however, comes at a great price as poor Ned had discovered at the age of nine years, twenty-seven weeks, six days, and three minutes. One touch brings life--wondrous life with each deep breath and each pulse of blood; the next brings eternal death. And should a renewed life continue past one minute--a mere sixty seconds of breath and thought and love and joy and belief--then the universe claims its own price with the life of another.

Balance must be maintained, after all.

The piemaker surveyed his surroundings. The remnants of an iron bed sat against the wall, bare mattress sagging through the frame, its ticking stained in ways young Ned thought it best not to contemplate. The floor beneath was rotted; gaps in the wooden planks stretched wide. There were no windows, and only one door, barred from the outside as he quickly discovered. A stool sat in a dim corner. On top of it rested a plate, filled with bread and cheese and a pitcher of a liquid that smelled strangely like pumpkin. A note written in a curious, almost old-fashioned scrawl had been tucked in the crook of the pitcher.

The stiff paper crinkled beneath Ned's fingers as he opened it.

_You can't get out_, he read, _and that's for your own good, boy. Not safe for your sort to be about tonight. Or tomorrow perhaps. I'll come for you when things have calmed. And Merlin's saggy tit, keep quiet if you want to stay alive._

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that such words did nothing to ease the piemaker's uncertainty.

He had just opened his mouth to shout--or perhaps swear--when he heard noises in the room beneath him. Aberforth's warning had most certainly struck a chord; Ned dropped to his knees and peered through a crack in the wooden floor.

"Oh," he said.

In all of his nineteen years, the piemaker had never seen anything of this sort. And given that he'd once brought his own mother back to life, only to kill her again that night with a simple goodnight kiss, Ned thought perhaps that was saying something.

A snake hung suspended in a ball of light, circling, circling, circling beneath him and Ned's breath caught in the back of his throat. A man paced beside her, or what he could only term to be a man, his pale skin scaly and shimmering. He turned in a swirl of black robes and skeletal hands, and the piemaker caught the glint of bright red eyes.

He shuddered.

The door opened; another man entered. Tall and thin with sallow skin and lank, black hair.

"My Lord," he said in deep, smooth tones and the hair on the back of the piemaker's neck prickled.

With a sense of growing horror, young Ned watched silently as the serpentine man circled the other, peppering him with questions, with verbal spars that the dark man turned deftly. Until with a touch of what Ned swore was a twig to the ball of light, it rolled forward, surrounding the dark man in a sepulchral glow, and the snake struck quickly, angrily at his throat.

Blood flew everywhere. A drop splatted against the piemaker's cheek, warm and wet.

Ned pushed himself to his knees, blindly scrambling backwards until his shoulders hit the frame of the bed. He was shaking, trembling, terrified. The young man knew death; oh, how well he knew it with the painful ache familiar only to one who lives each day in close proximity to its cold, callow reach. Ned had seen death, had breathed it, knew its taste, its touch, its thick, bitter drag.

But young Ned had never seen murder before.

He buried his head against his knees, his hands pressed to his ears to stifle the sound of movement below. He wouldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, just curled into himself for what seemed like hour after hour.

It was no more than ten minutes.

The piemaker brushed the heel of his palm across one wet cheek. He could taste salt. He shifted, pushed back against the bedframe as if it would protect him.

It did not.

Instead Ned felt himself falling again, in a crash of rotted wood and swirl of decades-old dust. _Well_, he thought, with no small amount of irritation at the wretchedness this day had been, _fuck._

He slammed into the corner of the room, cracking his head sharply against a hearthstone.

***

The room was silent.

Ned blinked away the blood that trickled over his eyelashes. His temple ached; his scalp felt itchy and tight. He sat up slowly, carefully, wincing with each movement. The bed swung from the open hole in the ceiling, two legs caught on the floor above, and the mattress had landed only a few feet from him, hard enough to send goosedown floating across the room. Rotted wood fragments were scattered everywhere. Ned dragged himself from the wreckage--his ankle was twisted at an angle that he was quite certain would not support his weight.

His palm hit fingers, warm skin against cold, and Ned froze.

"Crap," he said as the previously dead body shifted beneath his hand.

The facts were these: one Severus Snape, former potions professor, former headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and former high-ranking member of a rogue group of pureblood wizards known as the Death Eaters, had been murdered by his megalomaniacal superior earlier in the evening for the possession of a magical item which was later to be found useless, the irony of which would not be lost upon Severus were he to discover this circumstance since there were many other quite rational reasons for wishing to be rid of him--in particular his position as a spy.

In fact, Severus had anticipated his demise quite often over the past three years and had made the proper arrangements for clearing his name when the time came, each tailored to the particular recipient.

Severus had lived his life for as long as he could remember trapped deep within a nest of secrets. Even the minute handful of people who considered themselves to be within the circle of his confidence had only been aware of the facets of his life that Severus had, with chilly precision and ruthless skill, chosen to show them. Severus, up to and including his final moments of life, had continued the manipulations.

A master of half-truths, he preferred it that way.

_Lumos_, the piemaker heard whispered, and a weak flare of blue-white light sputtered above his head. He wasn't certain, but he almost thought he saw a shadow hovering in the hallway.

Ned's hand slipped on a pool of slick blood; he tumbled forward onto his shoulder with a grunt and sharp flash of pain as Severus sat up, the tears in his throat from the snake's fangs gleaming wetly in the faint light. He touched them then pulled his hand away, staring down at the blood that darkened his pale fingertips.

The piemaker pushed himself up, reaching for Severus. It had been years since he'd done anything as foolish as bringing a corpse back to life, and the reminder of his gift--and the memory of its discovery--twisted his stomach in a most painful manner.

Without even the slightest touch on Severus's part, young Ned found himself thrown against the wall, unable to move anything but his fingers and toes. He wiggled them frantically. Pain shot through his left foot. "Ow."

Severus dropped his hand. His eyes narrowed. "And who are you?"

"Ned," the piemaker said and he tried to shift his shoulder to no avail.

"A necromancer?" Severus touched his throat again. His hair fell forward, limp and filthy, and it shadowed his dark eyes.

"Just Ned." Ned licked his bottom lip nervously. "Look, if you don't mind, I need to touch you again--"

Severus scowled, and the piemaker suddenly felt as if he had been thrust back into his first year at Longburrow School. He could almost feel the bite of the wooden bench outside the headmaster's office against his thighs. He chewed the inside of his cheek. "I didn't mean to bring you back," he said, almost apologetically.

"I see," Severus said, though the piemaker knew there was no way he could. He stared at Ned; Ned could feel the seconds tumbling past.

The piemaker was certain he could hear the creak of floorboards in the hallway. He would have flinched--if he could move.

"No, really," Ned said in a rush. "It's almost been a minute, you see, and if I don't touch you again, you'll be alive forever, well, unless I touch you at some point in which case it's all a moot point really, isn't it, but the fact of the matter is that if I don't touch you in the next twenty seconds then someone else will have to die and that's just not fair to them--"

"Breathe." Severus raised an eyebrow.

The piemaker breathed. "Fifteen seconds," he choked out.

Severus merely tilted his head.

"Please?" Ned tried to pull his arm free. He thought it moved a fraction of an inch.

It wasn't enough.

The door swung open; Severus didn't turn around.

"Here now, you sneaky bastard shit," a woman said behind him, her voice raspy and rough. "Your dead body's what I'm to be collecting, he says, and what do I find here--"

"Hello, Alecto," Severus said, his eyes fixed on the piemaker, and Ned closed his eyes because he knew there was nothing to be done.

The thud, when it came, shook the floor beneath his feet.

Perhaps it would have eased the piemaker's conscience if he'd heard the littany of Alecto Carrow's sins. Perhaps it would have unknotted the twists currently curling his stomach to know how truly, entirely, completely evil she had been.

Or perhaps not.

Even evil, you see, begins as innocence. And Alecto Carrow, for all her crimes--and there _were_ oh so very many, had once been a child with hopes and dreams and laughter and wishes.

And poor Ned was still woefully young enough to remember that fact.

He opened his eyes. Severus was squatting next to the woman's body. He looked up.

"She's dead," Severus said, rather unnecessarily in the piemaker's opinion.

"Duh," Ned said, and he ignored the scowl that Severus sent his way as he stood. "She took your place."

Severus dusted his hands off. "Obviously." He studied the piemaker, much in the way young Ned recalled his science teacher at Longburrow School eyeing a particularly intriguing frog prior to ripping it open with a dissection knife. Ned shivered. "An interesting gift."

"I suppose that's one term for it."

"Indeed." Severus raised his eyebrow.

There was a silence. The piemaker was not fond of silences of this sort. While he greatly preferred solitude to the forced polite interaction society required as faulty proof that one was not likely to one day climb a belltower with shotgun in hand, there was a certain disquietude in the quiet, dark gaze fixed upon him that was all too familiar.

He looked away unhappily. "I'm going to have to touch you," he said after a moment. "You realize that, right?"

Severus's mouth thinned. He crossed his arms over his chest. He looked oddly like a giant bat, the piemaker thought. "Or you could not."

"That's not really an option."

"She's already dead."

The piemaker's gaze drifted to the crumpled body on the floor. Alecto Carrow's face stared up at the worn beams of the ceiling, as blank and dull in death as it had been alive. Severus did have a point, as much as Ned hated to admit it. "Give me one reason you should live," he said after a moment and he met Severus's gaze evenly. "And not her."

Another silence. The piemaker shifted against the wall once more. He was fairly certain he could move one shoulder away from the crumbling plasterboard. Perhaps.

Finally Severus sighed, a deep huff of breath that held years worth of frustration. His fingers twisted in the black wool of his robe. "I made a vow," he said, voice so low that Ned had to strain to hear him. "To protect a very foolish someone. I should like to keep it."

Ned blinked. "Okay," he said slowly. "I don't suppose you want to be a bit less vague--" At Severus's dark glare, he bit his bottom lip. "Yeah, didn't think so."

Severus waved a hand tiredly at him; Ned took a staggering step forward. On his broken foot. He fell to one knee, stoically blinking hard, his jaw tight.

"Your decision." Severus held himself still, but the piemaker could feel his tension. He shivered again. His foot throbbed, and he looked up at Severus. His fingers were only inches from Severus's ankle.

"Does this person need to be protected?"

"From his own idiocy," Severus muttered. There was a certain gentleness in his tone however, a faint softening of the sharpness that most people might not notice.

The piemaker did.

Young Ned pushed his hair back out of his eyes and sighed. He looked down at the dead Alecto again. A mayfly buzzed over her glassy eyes, then landed on her nose. "She doesn't look like a particularly nice person."

"She wasn't."

The piemaker chewed his bottom lip. He thought perhaps he might regret this decision, but he also supposed that what was done was done. Ned had always been a pragmatist at heart. "Well, then, I guess you should go."

Severus met his gaze.

"Go," Ned said again, in exasperation. "Just, you know, avoid people who think you're dead. It--" he hesitated and then sighed. "It gets messy to explain."

Severus nodded, a quick, curt dip of his head that sent his greasy hair tumbling forward against his cheek, and he turned on his heel. He paused at the door, looking back. "Thank you."

Ned shrugged, and the door closed behind Severus. "I think," Ned said to no one in particular, "this place is nuts."

He leaned against the wall and waited for Aberforth.

***

The piemaker saw Severus one other time in his life, many years down the road and in a city far, far away from the Scottish Highlands. It was a chance encounter, one of those odd quirks of coincidence and synchronicity that caused him to turn his head at just the precise moment on just the right street corner to catch a glimpse of a familiar profile.

His hair was still greasy and just beginning to be streaked with the barest hint of gray, and he had exchanged his blood-stained black robe for a black suit and dark tie. Their eyes met, his and Ned's, and he tilted his head in greeting, just as a younger man walked up, blond hair gleaming in the sunlight. He held a shopping bag in one hand, and a young boy on his hip, just as blond and as pointed pale as he. Severus took the child, his trepidation rather obvious, and Ned smiled faintly. The blond man's mouth twisted into a slight sneer; he turned his back on the piemaker.

Ned laughed.

"Who's that?" Chuck asked, bouncing up beside him unexpectedly. She licked cannoli cream from her thumb. Charlotte Charles, whom the piemaker had called Chuck since childhood, was the love of his life and the only other once-dead person he had ever allowed to live.

Despite its myriad complications, he had never regretted that decision either.

"Just someone I once knew," Ned said, watching as Severus proceeded up the sidewalk, the blond man's arm tucked through his. He felt a pang of envy at their easy touch, which he stifled as quickly as possible. The piemaker had learned long ago that such wishes were useless.

"Huh," Chuck said, still watching the couple continue down the street. The blond man stopped in front of a store window filled with shoes that Ned would never be able to afford at any point in his life and frowned. Severus merely looked impatient; the child hung off his arm, reaching for a passing puppy. It barked. The child began to cry. "Knew-knew in the Biblical sense?" Chuck asked, looking up at the piemaker. A curl of dark hair hung in her eyes, and Ned (not so young by this point in his life) had the distinct urge to tuck it back behind her ear.

He did not.

"No," he said instead, rather forcefully and Chuck just grinned up at him.

"Well, you do like your secrets," she began and the piemaker cut her off.

"Can we find Emerson, please?" He shifted from foot to foot. "I'd like to get this over with and just go home."

The smile that burst across Chuck's face took his breath away. "I'd like that too," she said and he nodded and started to walk. "Ned," she said and the piemaker looked back just in time to have a shopping bag pressed against his face. This was not as startling to him as one might think. He could feel Chuck's lips through the thin plastic, warm and soft and if he closed his eyes he could almost imagine the plastic gone.

She pulled away, and her eyes sparkled at him, and the piemaker once again realized how much better his life had become since her death.

Perhaps, he thought, looking at her with deep affection, there were people who were meant for second chances.

And he was right.


End file.
